This invention relates to an improved hair dressing device of the type known as a curling iron. Conventional curling irons include a heatable cylindrical barrel and a clamp type hair-confining member which, in an operative position, overlies a longitudinal segment of the barrel and is pivotally secured to the latter for movement between the operative position and a non-operative position away from the barrel. Curling irons of this type designed for personal or home use usually have a spring arranged to urge the clamp against the barrel, while professional models usually lack the spring and the clamp is manipulated to and from operative position entirely by the fingers of the hair dresser. Conventional curling irons of this type, while adapted to curl hair, possess disadvantages. In operation of a conventional curling iron, a lock of hair is clamped, midway of its length, between the barrel of the iron and the clamp. The iron then usually is twirled or rotated on its axis to roll the lock of hair thereabout into close contact with the heated barrel, and the exterior of the clamp, to impart a curl to the lock. In this process it is desirable to pull the iron away from the scalp so that the lock wrapped about the iron is slowly released. To do so requires successive releases of the clamp, by manual manipulation, to enable the iron to be pulled free of the lock. In this process the end of the lock frequently is not wrapped appreciably about the iron and so is not curled. In some instances the end of the lock may actually be turned back upon the curl and develop a crimp therein which can be removed only by wetting and drying the hair lock.
Additionally, a lock of hair frequently does not have all the hairs therein arranged in a generally parallel or combed relation and by the heating action of the iron this relation persists in the curled lock with a resulting unesthetic or disarrayed appearance.
Improvements have been made in curling irons to overcome the last mentioned disadvantage, i.e. to attempt to comb the hair lock while it is being curled. For example, the U.S. Pat. No. 3,935,423 to Pucci, No. 3,935,423, Jan. 27, 1976, discloses an otherwise conventional curling iron, of the professional type, which has a longitudinal section of the heatable barrel equipped with several longitudinal rows of combing teeth. A longitudinal slot is provided in the hair clamping member through which one row of the teeth project when the clamping member is in operative position to press hair against the barrel. While this arrangement provides for the combing of a hair lock during a curling operation, the abovementioned disadvantages which require successive releases of the clamping member during a combing operation are sill obtained. In fact, this disadvantage is accentuated because the hair tends to be caught or entangled between the clamping member, the teeth extending through the slot, and the barrel, to such an extent that effective manipulation of the iron is rather difficult.